He objected to a photo of coal miners who appeared to be in blackface. He never imagined the backlash.

The photo of men covered in soot, drinking at a pub, framed on the wall of a downtown Phoenix restaurant.(Photo: Rashaad Thomas)

What a pathetic excuse for a human being you are. Make the world a better place and kill yourself. – email from ‘Neighborhood Nationalist’

Rashaad Thomas was attending a party with his wife at Cornish Pasty restaurant in downtown Phoenix when he spotted a photo on the wall that hit him like a knife blade in the gut.

The restaurant is part of a small, locally owned chain, and its signature dish, the pasty, is a type of baked pastry similar to a pot pie that is said to be the traditional fare of miners in Cornwall on the southwest coast of England.

The restaurant decor features historic photos from the British Isles, some of people drinking, and some of the miners engaged in various activities. But the particular picture that caught Thomas’ attention looked different to him than the rest.

It depicts eight coal miners holding beers in what appears to be a pub around the turn of the last century. Their faces and hands are blackened, so much so that to Thomas, at least two of them looked as if it had been on purpose.

Blackface.

He asked to speak to the manager.

Both he and manager and co-owner Aaron Davies described the conversation as amicable.

An aerial view of the main floor inside the downtown Phoenix location of Cornish Pasty Co.(Photo: Kellie Hwang/The Republic)

Thomas says he asked Davies what he saw, and that Davies replied that he saw coal miners. Thomas replied that he saw blackface. Davies said Thomas wanted the picture to come down, which Thomas disputes.

Thomas says he asked Davies if there could be a card explaining that while some of the miners appeared to be in blackface, they were actually covered in coal dust.

Davies doesn't recall that aspect of the conversation, but says adding a caption would be going down a "slippery slope." Besides, it should be obvious from the context — it's a Cornish restaurant and mining was a dominant part of the Cornish culture. People should be able to tell that from the context of all the other mining photos.

Thomas was discouraged by the exchange.

He reached out to TheArizona Republic, which on a number of occasions has invited him and members of other diverse communities to let the newspaper know when they encounter issues that are newsworthy.

"Art can be a trickster," he wrote. "People view artwork once and subsequently see something different. Viewers cannot determine the intention of an artist’s work. Art also exposes society’s blind spots. Blackface is only a glimpse of a larger issue. The larger issue is the lack of representation of marginalized people and their voices in Phoenix."

In the three weeks since the column ran, Thomas has received interview requests from Fox News and a Welsh television station. He has appeared on a Chicago talk radio show, been criticized on Fox and has been written up in New Republic magazine.

He has also received more than 800 emails, many of which are breathtakingly vile and racist. At least one contained enough personal details about him and his family and enough of a veiled threat of physical violence that police suggested he file a report, which he did.

But even among the people who didn't make threats, it was clear Thomas had struck a nerve, and his timing was either brilliant or terrible.

Days after Thomas' column ran, photos emerged of young men in blackface and Ku Klux Klan regalia that appeared on Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam’s medical school yearbook page. Blackface had become the latest tripwire in America's ongoing struggle to come to grips with race, history and politics.

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Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam, center, and his wife Pam, watch as the casket of fallen Virginia State Trooper Lucas B. Dowell is carried to a waiting tactical vehicle during the funeral at the Chilhowie Christian Church in Chilhowie, Va., Saturday, Feb. 9, 2019. Dowell was killed in the line of duty earlier in the week. Pool photo by Steve Helber

A local newspaper the Richmond Free Press, with a front page featuring top Virginia state officials embroiled in controversies, sits for sale in a newsstand near the Virginia State Capitol, Feb. 9, 2019 in Richmond, Va. Virginia state politics are in a state of upheaval, with Governor Ralph Northam, State Attorney General Mark Herring, both Democrats, and Republican Senate Majority Leader Tommy Norment involved with past uses associations with blackface and Lt. Governor Justin Fairfax, a Democrat, accused of sexual misconduct by two women. Drew Angerer, Getty Images

A Senate page hands out documents to lawmakers, including State Senator Mamie Locke, right, during a Senate session at the Virginia State Capitol, February 8, 2019 in Richmond, Va. Drew Angerer, Getty Images

Protestors rally against Virginia Governor Ralph Northam outside of the governors mansion in downtown Richmond, Va. on Feb. 4, 2019. Demonstrators are calling for the resignation of Virginia Governor Ralph Northam, after a photo of two people, one dressed as a Klu Klux Klan member and a person in blackface were discovered on his personal page of his college yearbook. Northam said that while he had not appeared in the photo, "many actions that we rightfully recognize as abhorrent today were commonplace" and he was not surprised such material made its way to the yearbook. Logan Cyrus, AFP/Getty Images

Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam, with his wife Pam at his side, speaks at a press conference in the Executive Mansion at the Capitol in Richmond, Va., Saturday, Feb. 2, 2019. Northam is under fire for a racial photo that appeared in his college yearbook. Steve Earley, The Virginian-Pilot via AP

Members of the media listen to a statement from Virginia Governor Ralph Northam speaks about a racist photo that appeared in his 1984 medical school yearbook, at the Executive Mansion in Richmond, Va. on Feb.2, 2019. Northam is facing pressure to resign from both Republicans and Democrats, after racist medical school yearbook pictures, showing him and another person in racist garb at a party. Dan Currier, EPA-EFE

Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam, left, gestures as his wife, Pam, listens during a news conference in the Governors Mansion at the Capitol in Richmond, Va., Saturday, Feb. 2, 2019. Northam is under fire for a racial photo that appeared in his college yearbook. Steve Helber, AP

Demonstrators hold signs and chant outside the Governors office at the Capitol in Richmond, Va., Saturday, Feb. 2, 2019. The demonstrators are calling for the resignation of Virginia Governor Ralph Northam after a 30 year old photo of him on his medical school yearbook photo was widely distributed Friday. Steve Helber, AP

Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam prepares to address a news conference at the Capitol in Richmond, Va., Thursday, Jan. 31, 2019. Northam made a statement and answered questions about the late term abortion bill that was killed in committee. Steve Helber, AP

This image shows Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam’s page in his 1984 Eastern Virginia Medical School yearbook. The page shows a picture, at right, of a person in blackface and another wearing a Ku Klux Klan hood next to different pictures of the governor. It's unclear who the people in the picture are, but the rest of the page is filled with pictures of Northam and lists his undergraduate alma mater and other information about him. Eastern Virginia Medical School via AP

Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam shakes hands as he leaves the chambers after he delivered his State of the Commonwealth address during a joint session of the Virginia Legislature in the House chambers at the Capitol in Richmond, Va., Wednesday, Jan. 9, 2019. Steve Helber, AP

Virginia Governor Ralph Northam enters his conference room and heads for the podium, right, where he previewed several of his legislative proposals relating to elections during a media event at the State Capitol in Richmond, Va., Monday, Jan. 7, 2019. Bob Brown, Richmond Times-Dispatch via AP

Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam speaks during a news conference in the Crystal City neighborhood in Arlington, Va., Tuesday, Nov. 13, 2018. Amazon, which has grown too big for its Seattle hometown, said it will split its much-anticipated second headquarters between New York and northern Virginia. Susan Walsh, AP

A bundle of perceptions

I see that you were in the USAF. I thought the USAF had screening to prevent brain dead morons from joining up! My mistake. What a loser and snowflake you are. I feel sorry for your kids and family.
Regards, — email from ‘Larry’

The Cornish Pasty photo illustrates some of the central sticking points in America’s racial dialogue, which often is boiled down to unproductive, meme-length arguments, like "That’s offensive," "Political correctness run amok" and "Get over it.”

What the memes don't address is the deeper question. If something appears offensive to one group, should it be offensive to all, especially in a multicultural society?

And when something is offensive to one group, but not to another, should the prevailing culture always win?

Eighteenth-century philosopher David Hume said that mankind is “nothing but a bundle or collection of different perceptions,” and Thomas felt that his attempt to start a conversation about his perception was being shut down.

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Davies, the Cornish Pasty co-owner, said he didn't think Thomas wanted to have a conversation so much as he wanted to see the photo come down. Davies said blackface is a "relevant issue," but that this particular photo does not belong in that discussion.

“There’s a lot more pressing issues other than having a picture with coal dust," he said. “Senators wearing blackface is a bigger issue. Actual blackface is an issue. A picture in a restaurant with coal dust on their face isn’t an issue. It’s a picture with coal dust.”

This image shows Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam’s page in his 1984 Eastern Virginia Medical School yearbook. The page shows a picture, at right, of a person in blackface and another wearing a Ku Klux Klan hood next to different pictures of the governor. It's unclear who the people in the picture are, but the rest of the page is filled with pictures of Northam and lists his undergraduate alma mater and other information about him. (Photo: Eastern Virginia Medical School via AP)

For Thomas, the issue was not so much whether the men in the photo actually were in blackface. Just the fact that they appear to be in blackface evoked a visceral reaction, a reaction borne of a deep understanding of his own race and culture and the myriad ways African-Americans have had to — and still have to — confront racism in their daily lives.

Much of white America has a difficult time understanding a reaction like that one.A Pew Research Center poll found that while 53 percent of the African Americans surveyed said it was never acceptable to wear blackface, only 35 percent of whites surveyed felt the same way. Eighteen percent of whites surveyed felt it was always acceptable, compared with 5 percent for blacks.

The poll was taken the week before the controversy erupted over the Virginia governor's yearbook page.

Part of the disconnect is that many whites simply don’t realize how offensive blackface is to black Americans, said Baylor University Professor Mia Moody-Ramirez, an expert on racial depictions in the media.

“I think they don’t get it because they don’t know the history of it and the hurt that it causes,” said Moody-Ramirez, who co-authored a book that examines blackface and other portrayals of African Americans. “It was used to justify the institution of slavery and justify discrimination against African Americans.”

The historical intent, she said, was “to show a population that’s lazy, with low intelligence.”

“In seeing that image (of the coal miners) it brings back those feelings. That’s why it’s an issue.”

According to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African-American History and Culture, minstrel shows with white actors clad in blackface, usually made from burnt cork, first emerged in New York in the 1830s, and quickly became one of the leading forms of entertainment for white audiences.

Minstrel shows featuring white performers in blackface got their start in the 1830s. With the popularization of radio and motion pictures in the 1920s, professional minstrel shows lost much of their national following. However, amateur minstrel shows continued in local theaters, community centers, high schools, and churches as late as the 1960s.(Photo: Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia, Ferris State University)

The phrase Jim Crow, which is broadly used to describe the era of white supremacy before the Civil Rights Era, came from a character in a minstrel show.

Other historians have noted that minstrel shows were so ingrained in the American culture that they were regularly featured at gatherings of civic groups, like the Benevolent Protective Order of the Elks and the Lions Club. Even the Washington Press Club’s annual gridiron dinner, which almost every president has attended since its inception, featured minstrel shows prior to World War II, all of them featuring cruel, mocking portrayals of African-Americans by “blacked up” white actors.

“These performances characterized blacks as lazy, ignorant, superstitious, hypersexual, and prone to thievery and cowardice,” an article on the Smithsonian’s website states.

In an essay in the Washington Post after the Virginia governor’s blackface controversy surfaced, Princeton University Professor Rhae Lynn Barnes, who has studied blackface extensively, noted that blackface began to fade into the background after the Supreme Court’s Brown vs. Board of Education decision led to the integration of schools.

Black mothers, appalled at the racial stereotypes in the white schools their children were suddenly attending, pressured school boards to abandon the practice, and along with it any lessons that might have been learned from it.

Images and their intent

You, sir, are a fool, a tool of the democrat party, and a laughing stock. You give a bad name to black people. The truth is that you're just looking for ways to portray yourself as a victim of whites as some sort of ploy to get attention and sympathy. You have too much time on your hands and too much animosity towards whites who have done nothing to you. – email from ‘Eric.’

Rashaad Thomas is a soft-spoken man, a poet and an artist who wears hip round glasses and keeps his shoulder-length dreadlocks tied back. He has a T-shirt that says, “Too proud to code switch.”

Rashaad Thomas(Photo: Rashaad Thomas/Special for The Republic)

The phrase is a reference to the way many African Americans feel they have to subjugate their blackness in order to get along in white America. It was the subject of the 2018 film “Sorry To Bother You,” which featured an African-American telephone solicitor who found success after he switched his voice to sound more "white." It is also the name of an NPR podcast that discusses racial issues.

As an artist, Thomas thinks a lot about the power of images and the impact they have on those who view them. An important part of that equation is who has the power to present images and their intent.

Thomas was raised in a military family and served in the Air Force, the first armed service to fully integrate. Yet he, like many other people of color, was taught to bite his tongue when confronted with subtle slights and outright racism. Like many black men, he was taught to question whether he really heard what he thought he heard and whether an insult was really an insult.

Now he has two young daughters at home, and he thinks about the world they will inherit. So with them in mind, he said he felt it was important to start a conversation about the photo.

He knew the risk. When a white person complains, they are perceived as assertive. When it’s a black person, “we are portrayed as militant,” he says.

“There’s a problem because people are used to us not saying it,” he says.

“But once you know, you can’t unknow,” he says, and with that, he started the conversation about the photo.

Coal mining a century ago

I just want to add my voice to those mocking you for being incomprehensibly stupid for your idiotic interpretation (and the offense you inevitably took) of a photograph on a wall. I'm going to assume that you are far too gone down the road of typical leftist insanity to even understand how ridiculous you are. You're offended by everything, yet understand nothing….You're a joke — e-mail from ‘John’

The original photo is owned by Getty Images and was taken in 1912. According to archivists at Getty, the caption on the back of the photo reads “Coal Strike Crisis, South Wales Colliers (coal miners) merrily discussing the situation over post of beer. 27.2. 1912."

This is the caption on the back of a photograph of a group of coal miners. It reads: Coal Strike Crisis, South Wales Colliers (coal miners) merrily discussing the situation over post of beer. 27.2. 1912.(Photo: Getty Images)

The date, Feb. 27, coincides with what became known as the National Coal Strike of 1912 in which more than a million miners throughout the United Kingdom struck for a uniform minimum wage. The movement was part of “The Great Unrest,” which saw a wave of union activity sweep the UK in response to crushing poverty, stagnant wages and rampant income inequality — at the time 4 percent of the nation’s population controlled 90 percent of its wealth.

The strike began on Feb. 26, the day before the photograph was taken, and lasted 37 days until Parliament passed an emergency law establishing a wage structure that was more equitable to the miners.

While the strike had already begun when the photo was taken, not every mine shut down at the same time, and it’s possible that the people depicted had indeed just finished a shift.

Dr. Ben Curtis, a professor at Cardiff University in Wales and an expert on Welsh coal mining, said via e-mail that he does not believe the photo shows men in blackface.

“While I stress that I very much sympathise with the concerns of the diner (Thomas), I have to say categorically that in this instance I am sure that this is not an example of blackface.”

Ben Curtis, professor at Cardiff University in Wales and an expert on Welsh coal mining via e-mail

"While I stress that I very much sympathise with the concerns of the diner (Thomas), I have to say categorically that in this instance I am sure that this is not an example of blackface," he wrote.

"Mining was extremely dirty and dangerous work, and miners' faces getting comprehensively covered with coal dust in the manner illustrated in the photo was literally an everyday phenomenon. The early twentieth century was also the period before the widespread introduction of colliery (coal mine) pithead baths. Miners would often leave work covered in dirt and have to bathe at home. En route, calling at the pub was likewise a regular occurrence."

Ceri Thompson, curator of the Welsh National Coal Museum, said the photograph was taken in Cwmbach, a town in the Cynon Valley in South Wales.

He added that while blackface was common in a variety of contexts in the United Kingdom around the time the photo was taken, he’s confident that the men in photo are just dirty from coal.

"These men are in no way 'blacked up.' If you'd spent any time on a coal face (which I did from 1969 to 1986) you’d have coal dust on every part of you," he said via email. “Some of the men who worked underground away from the coal face or on the surface of the mine would have a lighter covering and just look ‘grubby'."

He acknowledged that "it seems strange that the miners are still in working gear if the strike was already a day old," but other historical accounts indicate that it’s possible not all mines joined the strike at the same time.

Thompson said miners were known to "'black up' when involved in illicit trade union type actions. In the 1830s a group known as 'Teirw Scotch' or 'Scotch Cattle' would black up (to avoid recognition?) and engage in intimidating 'street theatre outside 'scab' (houses) or even cause violence to those that they thought had broken the rules of the working class."

Thompson said a 1910 photo taken during the Cambrian Combine Dispute, also known as the Tonypandy Riots, shows some striking miners wearing white smocks and apparently in blackface, which he said was "probably a throwback to an earlier era of civil disobedience."

A 1957 front page of The Staunton News-Leader includes a scene from a Fishersville Ruritan Club minstrel show, including several characters in blackface.(Photo: News Leader Archive)

Thompson also noted that working-class carnivals at the time sometimes featured versions of minstrel shows with musicians in blackface.

"Therefore, there was a lot of 'blacking up' going on around the time this photo was taken, however, this particular image isn't connected to those 'traditions' in any way," he said.

A grain of sand on the beach

Those who cry "racism" the loudest and find racism in everything they see and hear usually tend to be the real racists themselves. Check your black racism, sir. And, yes, blacks can be racist. In fact, I'd argue that blacks are far more racist than whites. And, no, one does not need to be in a position of "power" to harbor racist views.— email from 'Erick'

Thomas feels that in his ideal world, the photo would be taken down, but "I don't have the right to tell an owner what to do with his establishment."

He still thinks there is an opportunity to educate people by including a caption with the photo, a solution endorsed by Moody-Ramirez, the Baylor University professor.

Despite the backlash, he doesn't regret writing the op-ed, but he does regret that so many people were unable to look past the provocative headline (which Thomas didn’t write) and read what he wrote with an open mind.

But on the whole, "It’s a grain of sand on the beach compared to what I’ve experience in 39 years of life."

And in the end, he did receive a handful of positive e-mails from people who were willing to consider his point of view.

"You make a good point about intention vs. Impact. No matter the intention, it's my instinct that if one person is hurt, there should be no reason to perpetuate the cause of that hurt. Especially if it's so easy to remedy. As educators, we strive to do the best thing we can. Sometimes just simple is changing our language, in this case it seems like it would be as simple as the solutions you suggested. Take the picture down. If they don't want to do that, they could add the intention statement, as you suggested. Doesn't that seem like simple Humanity to you?" — e-mail from Michael, 8th grade teacher, Toronto Ontario